WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE?Magpie is a former journalist, attempted historian [No, you can't ask how her thesis is going], and full-time corvid of the lesbian persuasion. She keeps herself in birdseed by writing those bad computer manuals that you toss out without bothering to read them. She also blogs too much when she's not on deadline, both here and at Pacific Views.

Magpie roosts in Portland, Oregon, where she annoys her housemates (as well as her cats Medea, Whiskers, and Jane Doe) by attempting to play Irish music on the fiddle and concertina.

Almost immediately after the news broke that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was dead, many US pundits began asking the question, How much will the 'good news' from Iraq help Dubya's abyssmal approval ratings?

According to a new CBS News poll, the answer to that question isn't 'Not at all.' It's worse than 'Not at all':

[Graphic: CBS News]

If Dubya's approval drops by 2 percent after gettting the best news from Iraq in a long time, I have to wonder what some really bad news comes around, such as when the whole truth about the Haditha masscre emerges. And in the longer term, the reaction to Zarqawi's death has to call into question the expectations that an 'October Surprise' involving Osama bin Laden will be enough to save the GOP's political fortunes. If voters didn't care much about Zarqawi after all the effort Dubya's administration went through to make him Terrorist Enemy #1, perhaps the time is past when pulling Osama out of a hat will work political magic.

Some other tidbits from the poll:

Fifty-five percent of Americans still say the war in Iraq is going badly for the United States, while an overwhelming majority, 82 percent, describe the situation in Iraq as a civil war between Iraqis.

Mr. Bush's approval rating for handling the war in Iraq is unchanged at 33 percent, while approval for his handling of terrorism remains just below 50 percent.

The president also gets mostly poor marks on domestic issues, with just one in three Americans saying they approve of how he's handling both immigration and the economy.